In the interest of welcoming the lastest batch in our at this point
constant influx of new readers, I have begun the task of creating a simple phrasebook to translate between the more "mainstream" punditry most Americans are routinely exposed to, and the far more intricate and precise verbal dances of the Internets. I haven't gotten very far yet, due to the complexities of translation, but there is enough to provide at least the starting guideposts for novice Internet travelers.
I want to make something clear: both versions of each phrase below mean pretty much the same thing. Because of the high printing costs of columns, however, you will note that printed punditry usually is the far sparser format, with very small catchphrases like "I disagree" or "is misinformed" that stand for larger and more intellectually robust philosophical equivalents. In the Internets, where ink is nearly free, we do not need to use these catchphrases, and a full and complete description of each idea can be more precisely expressed.
Which is better? It simply depends on your point of view.
In order to better facilitate comprehension, most of these examples will the fictitious proper name "Smith" to refer to a given opposing pundit. These are merely placeholders, meant to ease construction of similar phrases with true pundit names inserted as you may require.
A Guidebook: Translating from Mainstream Punditry to Internet-Speak
1a. I disagree with Mr. Smith.
Mr. Smith is an idiot.
1b. I strongly disagree with Mr. Smith.
Mr. Smith is a goddamned idiot.
1c. I very strongly disagree with Mr. Smith.
Mr. Smith is a goddamned f--king idiot of the highest caliber, and merely being exposed to his columns causes dry heaves among any Americans who still themselves have a carefully guarded shred of remaining intellect. His arguments are the intellectual equivalent of getting an ebola and Mentos enema.
2. I am not sure I fully understand Mr. Smith's argument.
I am not sure I fully understand Mr. Smith's argument, since I am not currently on crack. As near as I can tell, it involves invisible pixies that have power over time and space, and which Mr. Smith believes can be, with sufficient effort, persuaded to transport us to a parallel dimension in which Mr. Smith knows what the f--k he is talking about.
3. Mr. Smith remains misguided.
Mr. Smith continues to suck powerfully, and with conviction. From now on, we shall call him "Oreck".
4. Mr. Smith is being overly charitable to the Bush administration.
As usual, Mr. Smith has his head so far up Bush's ass that he can taste Bush's brand of gum. From now on, we shall call him "Spearmint".
5. Mr. Smith is ill-advised to use the term "islamofascists"
Mr. Smith has learned a new word promoted by the people he most closely identifies with: ignorant f--king racists whose only great achievement in life came when they finally learned to spell "fascist". From now on, we shall call Mr. Smith a "punditofascist". To honor his particular brand of genius, I shall build a monument to him in my backyard. To the casual observer, it will appear to be my badly malfunctioning compost heap, but I assure you it is a monument to his genius. I shall put a picture of his gargantuan head on a stake above the monument just so nobody will be confused, and to scare away rats.
6. What Mr. Smith fails to understand is that...
If Mr. Novak -- I mean, Mr. Smith -- would stop absent-mindedly chewing on severed kitten heads for a few moments, perhaps he could eventually grasp the central points involved here. Or any points involved here, for that matter. At the least, I think he should pick the tiny whiskers out of his teeth before trying to lecture us about a subject that he knows only from whatever he was able to pick up from clamping remora-like to his latest momentary political patron.
7. Mr. Smith repeats the common refrain that...
Yes, what Mr. Smith is stating here is called a "talking point". It is provided to him by hyper-partisan sources who have spent far more cash and time investigating the right words to use for partisan gain than actually working to comprehend any of the issues involved.
Furthermore, if Mr. Goldberg -- I mean, Smith -- could get his head out of his ass long enough to change the toner cartridge in his fax machine, maybe he'd be able to read the talking points well enough to actually repeat them in a vaguely competent fashion. As it is, he sounds like a parrot trying to mimic the sound of a car alarm, which causes children to run screaming and makes Jesus cry.
8. Mr. Smith is misinformed.
Mr. Smith is a liar. He has always been a liar. He is quite specifically a professional liar, which is similar to being a twenty-dollar whore but without the human touch. He is given a political voice merely because he can lie so spectacularly, and with such little apparent effort, that he saves his employers the trouble of finding twenty separate people who actually know what they are talking about on twenty different subjects. Why bother, when you can hork up repetitive bullcrap on a weekly basis in which you claim every problem America faces can be solved by (a) cutting taxes, (b) cutting taxes, (c) rounding up brown people, (d) killing brown people, or (e) cutting more taxes? As with all similar pundits, it's like a Magic Eight Ball: you ask the political question, and you get one of a small number of predetermined responses, which will usually be rattled off at random. Trade deficits? It's because the American people have turned godless. Budget deficits? That requires a big wall to be built to keep out brown people. Iraq War? Tax cuts will preserve our freedom!
On occasion, you get "Ask Again Later", which is a punditry device so common as to have achieved its own unit of measurement, the Friedman -- I mean, the Smith. Every Republican-caused problem is exactly one Smith away from being permanently solved. It's like a rainbow! Run, children! Run across the field! The rainbow is just on the other side of that interstate highway, if you run you can get the pot of gold! Trust us, it'll work this time!
9. Mr. Smith's Iraq policy continues to be ill-thought-out.
Here's a new goddamn rule. We don't have to listen to any pundit who starts his column off with urgings to "stay the course" or "fight them there instead of here", which is the very serious pundit's equivalent of "By the power of Grayskull!" We don't have to listen to any pundit whose entire Middle East strategy sounds like it was taken from HALO. If you are wrong, and you remain wrong, and you continue to tout your uncanny wrongness as a form of unique brilliance, at some point the American people has a right to cut bait and go listen to someone else.
Why are we treating our national frigging war policies like the Special Olympics? I fail to see why people who have been wrong about every single foreign policy prediction for the past four decades are still allowed to hold pens, much less wield them in public.
Oh, wait, now I remember. It's because being a goddamn incompetent horsef--king liar is considered a valuable punditry skill, cherished by political opportunists and media publishers who have better things to do than read the actual monstrosities against God and nature that they put up each day. Like figuring out what more effectively masks the smell of gin in the mornings: coffee, or orange juice? See the poll on page six!
10a. Mr. Smith's economic philosophies leave much to be desired.
Mr. Stossel -- I mean, SMITH, dammit -- has an actual economic philosophy? Really? Is it one that has more depth than inviting the entire American middle and lower classes to come get free mustache rides?
10b. Mr. Smith's educational philosophies leave much to be desired.
Ibid.
10c. Mr. Smith's other philosophies leave much to be desired.
Ibid.
11. Ms. Malkin's -- I mean, Smith's -- column certainly offers a unique viewpoint.
If you put a thousand monkeys in a room with a thousand typewriters for a few thousand years, they wouldn't be able to replicate this column. The resulting overpowering smell of thousands of years of accumulated monkey shit, however, would come pretty close.
12. This is a misguided column.
This is the biggest piece of crap I have ever been exposed to. I am ashamed to live in a country where they require warning labels on grocery bags noting "this bag is not a toy", and yet this brain-bleedingly stupid crap can just be shoveled into a newspaper with no apparent tort ramifications whatsoever. How many people are going to die because they no longer want to live in a world in which this pile of vampiric hamster droppings can be passed off as "commentary?"
I would perhaps expect arguments as craptacular as this to be a staple of Head Injury Weekly, but for it to appear in any other syndicated format is a sign of the impending Apocalypse. The First Horseman is saddling up as we speak, and his name is Fuck This Goddamn Column To Hell.
This column should have to wear an ankle bracelet, and the authorities need to be alerted as it moves from county to county. This column has molested me. It is the quintessential "bad touch". It is the creepy drunken uncle of political commentary, and it smells like a combination of Thunderbird and axle grease.
13. I still disagree with Mr. Smith.
I am off to shoot myself in the head. On the off chance that Mr. Smith gets dropped by his syndicate and laughed off the airwaves as a waste of an otherwise perfectly good barstool, please stop by and tell me, and I shall reconsider.
There's your guide. Hopefully this will help those new to the blogs to understand common phraseologies used by the Internets, and how it really isn't too different from those used by the "professional" pundit class. There's basically two differences:
1) More obvious swearing
2) Less obvious drunkenness
Of course, the quotes in this guidebook are purely fictitious. In real life, pundits would almost never attack even the most stupid of stupid crap spouted by another pundit, no matter how vile, loathsome, factually challenged, or just plain lie-riddled, and so I had to make up most of the "mainstream" quotes.